I kind of disagree. I mean, loving and then losing hurts. Up until the age of 10, I moved all around the States with my family. We didn't stay in any place long enough for me to make that many friends, but leaving a home I loved was hard. I could never play in that back yard again, never ride my bike down that street again, never have the same view from my bedroom.
We finally settled down in New Hampshire, but the losing hadn't ended, of course. I made friends that were so close that we were practically siblings. Then they moved away, or decided to drift apart, or changed drastically. It's less painful just to stifle those memories--stifle, stifle, stifle. Don't think about all those people and animals and places I had to leave at some point in my life. Shove them away, back into the recesses of my mind. If I don't think about the ones I deeply loved, I won't cry.
Better to never love at all than to love and lose, right?
Well, no. Pain has made me a more empathetic person. Empathetic people understand other people better. And here comes the clincher: story characters are people! So through loss we can understand our characters better--make them more believable.
I think we all know this in some form or another: pain leads to art, expression, feeling. If I walked through life as a happy-go-lucky leprechaun, I'd miss out! (Nothing against leprechauns, btw.)
Anyway, I was not trying to write a sappy post. I don't want to sound like I'm preaching about love or something. (Nothing against that either, but that wasn't my goal.) I guess I'm just trying to find the beauty in the pain, and transfer that transcendence to my writing. Kind of makes me think of this passage of Hebrew prophecy from Isaiah 61:
He has sent me...to comfort all who mourn,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
So, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? I guess I agree...
How does your life transfer to writing? Do you try to keep the two somewhat separate or do your experiences sharply color your stories?
